My Eggs are Free

So I have had my Hens for about 6 months now and after a slow start egg wise they all began laying an egg a day. This as it turns out is more eggs than I and the Mrs are willing to eat. Four eggs a day, 7 days a week is a lot of eggs to eat, but we do try. Amanda has had to do much more baking this year. Yum!

Beaky, Duchess, Matron and Speckle enjoying their warm treat on a frosty morning

No matter how much baking and eating of eggs we do there is to much for us, so we have been selling the eggs to friends and colleagues for a very cheap £1 a half dozen. That £1 then gets put in to the chicken tin which is used to buy their feed. Yesterday I looked in the tin and found I had about £10 and decided to stock up on some feed. I bought some pellets, corn and some rice and spaghetti which are treats. They absolutely go crazy for some warm boiled rice or spaghetti, I'm sure they think they are maggots or worms, but what ever they think I feel happy that they have had a warm meal to keep them going as the weather gets colder. So it turns out I am getting my eggs for free, by selling them cheap to friends who appreciate a bargain, from looked after hens, that will not end up as cat food when they stop laying.

Best of the Blossoms 2013

Getting Ready For 2014 Vegetables.

2013 brought many successes and a few failures in the veg garden. I grew more variety and more productively than ever. Of course certain thing (as there always is) didn't work, my brassica's where destroyed by caterpillars and my spuds had a scab problem. But generally its been a good year.

But its time to think about next year and what a year it should be with my new greenhouse and raised beds. With all the extra growing room its been really enjoyable seed shopping this year, and variety is the aim for next year. So I thought I would have a little run through of some of what I will be growing.

Sweetcorn

I am going for two varieties next year, I will be growing one that I did this year called Double Standard Bicolor, which did great, the look and taste fantastic. The second variety I am growing will is called Eskimo White. This variety or the packet at least has come from Russia (this is a theme for next year). From what I have read it will do well in the short British growing season. The instructions are all in Russian and my Russian being what it is means I will be guessing on how to plant it! But I am sure it will be the same as any other corn variety.

Melons

Now that I have a greenhouse I can finally grow in quantity all the good sweet things that do far better under glass. A few years ago I bought some melon seed and never grew them as I never had the space or the greenhouse so I gave them to my neighbour. The variety was called Minnesota Midget, my neighbour got them going and grew some lovely little melons. In return I got some melons and of course the seeds too. The Minnesota Midget is a very small melon roughly the size of a tennis ball and looks rather like a cantaloupe. It is very sweet and juicy and grow very well under glass in the UK, they of course as you can guess from the name come from America  and were designed for short growing seasons and cooler climates. One melon is not enough for me it seems and I have also bought Watermelon seed called Blacktail Mountain. Another American variety this early watermelon again is designed for cooler climates and as such is a miniature. Even two melon types is not enough and I just acquired another variety simply called Russian Melon. I have no idea how big these will grow or what they taste or look like so it will be a surprise to see what happens.
Finally the last 'melon' i am going to grow is called the 'Incan Mouse Melon', also know as the Mexican Mouse Melon, it is believed to have been a staple food for Amerindians before us European's turned up. I am not sure if these are true melons at all but I have read they are small grape sized fruit similar in taste to a cucumber. This again has come from Russia and thus the information is all in Russian. This will be another experiment but I am sure some of you Americans will have come across this before.

Beetroot

I love beetroot and not just pickled. Chocolate and beetroot cake is soooo good. So every year I grow plenty, this year I grew two varieties Detriot and Cylindra and I will grow them again next year. The new addition to my beetroot family will be Touchstone Gold a very rare strain that I am told was near extinction a few years back. As the name suggests it is a yellow beet, I wonder if it stains your hands as bad as your normal beetroot?

French Bean

I have never got round to ever growing french beans, so for my first attempt I have gone for an heirloom variety 'Cherokee Trail of Tears'. This comes again from America but more specifically from the Cherokee Nation of Native North Americans. The history of this variety also adds to its prestige, being one of the few crops the Cherokee took with them when they were driven out of their native lands, hence the name 'Trail of Tears'.

Tomato

I am growing two new varieties next year as well as the ones I usually grow. The first is called 'Latah' a very early cherry tomato Idaho, USA. It tolerates a very cool summer and can crop as early as June/July. The other variety is called 'Millefleur Yellow Vine Tomato' and is a centiflor type. Centiflor's are a new type of tomato I am told growing hundreds of 3/4 inch fruits on huge flower truss's. It is safe to say I do not know what to expect with this. I can imagine how it is going to look.

Rhubarb

Finally another Russian acquisition, simply called on the packet 'Rhubarb XXL Size'. I would expect this is quite a late variety which will complement my early types I have already. The XXL size intrigues me and I look forward to seeing how big it will grow and if the taste will be as good. This I have bought as seed so its going to be a season or two before I get to see what this is really like.    


I have also gone for some Elephant Garlic along with a more standard variety White Solent growing these both for the first time. The are already in the ground over wintering and doing well. Also already planted are my onions a Japanese variety of which i can not remember what they are called. Just got to get myself some blue potatoes and I will be happy!

La Gomera, Tenerife, Fauna, Foliage, Flowers and My Sticky Fingers

Yesterday I returned from a week away in the very hot and very sunny Canary Islands, specifically Tenerife and the tourist centre of Los Cristianos. In between me trying to laze around and relax I spent a little time looking at the local plants. Los Cristianos itself has been well planted with palms, pines and flowering bushes of all kinds. Streets and gardens were full of fauna and flowers, most of which I had never seen before, I must have looked like a little fat kid in a sweetie shop, running round taking pictures and fondling the plants!! The resort has been well planted and really breaks up the view of the endless hotels and apartments that line this part of the coast. Here are a few pictures I took of the plants here.

A Boulevard in Los Cristianos 

Cactus Tree? Its bloody amazing.

Some kind of tree that looks very much like a fern.

I just liked this little palm because it looks like a Pineapple

Los Cristianos is tourist central and for at least one day I wanted to get away from that, so after much pleading with my partner I managed to get a day trip out to La Gomera an Island a short distance on the ferry from Tenerife. Here there are few people and fewer tourists. The island is small but very beautiful, the centre of which is a Unesco world heritage site due to its rare and specialised plant life. The forest here is I have to say a strange one, the majority of the trees look like overgrown heather and that is what they are. Tree heather! As a small volcanic island it is made up of steep cliffs around its circumference that reach in to the interior. The edges of the ravines all over the island have been terraced over the 500 years or so the Spanish have held it. This really makes you think you could be in the Andes in some old Incan village, it was I have to say a little surreal. All across the Canaries you will see Cactuses of different types, these are not native but were brought back by the Spanish from places like Mexico. Everywhere you look there seems to be one type of cactus or another growing, only on the highest peaks to the seem to disappear. It also seems each valley has its own micro climate, on leaving the island capital San Sebastian you see a dry and arid landscape littered with disused terracing but only in the next valley you find a wetter climate were banana groves, palms and pines rise up from the valley. La Gomera is most famous as the last part of the known world Columbus visited before setting sail for the Indies.  On my trip around Gomera I again took a few pictures (below) but did not get any of the names.

A picture of the terracing that covers the island, most of which has fallen out of use.

Whilst going around Gomera I did pick up some seeds, I have no idea if they will grow here in the UK or even what plants they are. They were there and my sticky little fingers could not resist. Actually the only seed I picked up that I know what it is. is Blackberry. The fruit was small and hard and not very appetising but I still wanted the seed just to try them here. I'm sure the more knowledgeable gardeners will know the above plants, unfortunately I am still learning. As for Gomera, if you are holidaying in Tenerife a day trip to Gomera is a must! I fell in love with the place and I am currently try to persuade my partner to move there!

The Potato Harvest 2013

A few days ago I harvested my potato's and was very happy with the amount I had grown. From a 12x5 foot bed I got 2 large sacks of King Edward potato's. The two bags are essential to this post and for all the wrong reasons. The reason being one of the bags is full of spuds with some sort of disease! Here is a particularly bad example of one....

Half of my crop has these 'scabs' all over them, which is really annoying! Though they look abit black in the picture, fresh out of the ground they were brown in colour. At first I thought I might have had blight though having never had any diseased potatoes of any kind I was not sure! So On to the RHS website I went to confirm my fears that it was blight. 

As it turns out the most likely candidate was not blight but Potato Scab!And whats worse it was probably my fault. The RHS says....

Common scab is caused by Streptomyces scabies and powdery scab by Spongospora subterranea f. sp. subterranea. Both are pathogenic micro-organisms and cause rough, scabby patches. Scabs appear during summer and persist on harvested tubers throughout storage.

It turns out the above diseases are at there worst through dry periods in the summer and I have to say I was not watering them enough. We had the hottest and dryest summers I can remember for a long time and certainly since I have been gardening and I was watering at the same levels as last year where we had a far wetter summer. So I have lived and learnt from this experience.

The spuds though won't go to waste, the most scabby ones have been boiled up as mash and fed the the chickens, they love it, Others with minor scabbing will be eaten first and hopefully the good bag will store well for winter. As a small back up I have some Nadine potato's growing in a tub for some Christmas new potatoes.

Bokashi Composting

I have not met many people yet who use the Bokashi composting system (thats a bad way of putting it as I do not exactly go round asking people if they use it) and this surprises me as its an amazing way to compost. If you have no idea what I am talking about I will give a brief idea of what Bokashi is!

Bokashi is a method that uses a mix of microorganisms to cover food waste to decrease smell. It derives from the practice of Japanese farmers centuries ago of covering food waste with rich, local soil that contained the microorganisms that would ferment the waste. After a few weeks, they would bury the waste that weeks later, would become soil.

Basically you buy or make your own Bokashi bran, this is just bran that has been inoculated with certain 'good' bacteria that help the decomposition of food waste. You place your food waste, which unlike any other composting methods can include meat and dairy, into a bucket. The bucket must have a lid that makes it air tight when fastened on as the process of decomposition with bokashi needs an anaerobic environment to work. When your waste is in, you sprinkle on some bran and close the lid. Repeating the process until the bucket is full. When this happens you leave your bucket and let all those micro-organisms get to work for a few weeks, the waste is basically fermenting or pickling. If when you open your bucket you smell a sweet pickled smell the process is working.

What is a little strange about this process is the fact that the waste you have put in looks no different at the end. Don't expect to find a pile of lovely compost just yet. If you buy a bokaski bin they are basically buckets with a tap, similar I guess to a wormery or a homebrew barrel. The tap will give you your first product! A very strong liquid fertiliser rich in good micro-organism. I dilute mine 1-100 and it works fine, other sites suggest this might be overkill so next year I will experiment with that a little. One you have captured you fertiliser and the food waste has fermented for several weeks you can do a couple of things with it. I myself put it in the compost bin. by digger a hole in the centre and then put my bokashi waste in. Making sure to cover it all over with a bit of soil or what's in the compost. Leave this for a month or too and it will degrade in the compost. I left mine in over winter and cleaned out in the spring and it was brilliantly black moist compost. Your other option is to dig it in to a trench in your flower or veg beds and cover over with soil. A few months down the line if you dig were you buried it you will find a very rich black soil.

Bokashi has many uses and it really worth taking a look at, if you are really into being green it something I think you should try. As I said above ALL food waste can be composted safely with bokashi! Here is a video that probably explains it all a little better than me.

A Poor Gardeners Addiction

I have been a busy bee in the garden recently with several little projects. Two of which have been garden planters for next year. With money being tight both have been made with free wood and things I had around the shed! I posted a few months ago a strawberry planter made from old waste pipe which worked well and I promised an up date on how well it was doing. Well nearly all is good with the planter however next spring I will make one big change to its design and that is to install an irrigation tube inside it. I found when watering it I was wasting large amounts of water and feed as it ran of and out of the planter. This addition will get its own post I'm sure.

I have to admit something now, I have a problem, a problem that is slowly taking over my everyday thoughts and effecting important decisions in my life! I am addicted to PALLETS! I have even started stealing them! I walk down a road and see one there I will come in the night and steal it! I spend hours of my life thinking about them, what i can make with them and where i can get some from! Its just not healthy anymore.....but I am just not ready to give them up.

Over the last year or so I have collected a few and made a few little planters here and there like this...

Its pretty ugly but my carrots did fine it it! I also built a garden theatre/shelf for plants, a gate and a bird house.

Now I've taken the next step in pallet addiction, THE WALL PLANTER!

This is an extremely common thing to do amongst the Pallet addicted peoples of the world, numerous examples can be found on the web if you go and look! This is my own very ugly one. Built with the pallet my greenhouse glass came on and some left over pallet bits. The back of the pallet is lined with some old hemp sack I had in the shed. I reckon many of you are looking at it and thinking "what a pile of ugly s#*t" and you would be right. But a lick of paint some compost and some plants it will come into its own! I hope.